Category: Career

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Business Career

Growing in a management role

An acquaintance reached out to get some career advice. She had worked in this organization for over 12 years. Over these years, she had been an individual contributor. Recently she had got an opportunity to take on an additional role in management. She was seeking advice on how to grow in management. My inputs were as follows:

  • Performance in the new role: As she is taking on a role in management for the first time, it is important for her to understand the expectations clearly. I advised her to have a discussion with her supervisor and agree to the metrics that she would be measured by. I also suggested that she seek feedback every three months.
  • Build a network internally and externally: Many of us do not consciously build our networks. This is especially true of an individual contributor, like a technical architect in IT or a faculty member in education. Such a person feels that performance should speak for his or her capabilities and that is sufficient to be recognized by the organization. However, performance in their current job, offers only one perspective. The individual may have other capabilities which may not come to the surface in the job they have. Hence it is important to meet different people in the organization and build a network. During that process, others in the organization will become aware of the individual’s capabilities. It is also important to build a network externally. One gains new insights from interacting with professionals externally. This will help them contribute more in their jobs which will in turn help in their career. Building an external network can take years. However, one can start the process by interacting with people from your college, family and then slowly extending it. I also advised her that when she is building these connections both internally and externally, she needs to contribute and not just receive. For example, send an interesting article to a colleague, connect two people in her network who may have a shared interest etc.
  • Build your personal brand: As we discussed, she realized, that her identify was closely linked to her current company. Many of us are in the same situation. We overestimate the value of our brand, without realizing that it gets power from the company we work for. One way to test this, is to ask yourself – will you be invited as a panelist in a conference if you are no longer in the current organization? Building a personal brand is easier said than done. Volunteering in an industry association, writing blogs & creating interest groups were some of the ideas we discussed.
  • Volunteer for cross-functional initiatives: It is good to get exposure to different aspects of a company’s functioning – marketing, customer experience, HR, finance & operations. One way to get this is to volunteer for corporate projects. Usually companies have cross-functional initiatives – ranging from quality projects, technology projects and annual strategic initiatives. I advised her to volunteer for such projects. Apart from getting wider perspective of the organization, this would also help her build internal networks.

While all the above is good advice, it will be important for her to execute on the above four areas. We did agree to meet again in a few months to take stock.

Categories
Career

The importance of planning during a job search

A few weeks back, I got a message from an ex-colleague from Bengaluru, wanting to talk about his career. Usually this is code for wanting to switch jobs but in this case, it was worse – my ex-colleague had recently been laid off during the midst of the pandemic. He had been working in this company for close to 10 years after graduation and this had come across as a complete surprise to him. He told me that for the last few years, he was working in business analytics and had developed good skills in that area.

He asked me if I could connect him to people who were hiring. While I said I would do that, I asked him, how he was going about his job search. The answer didn’t surprise me – like many other people I had interacted with in a similar situation, he didn’t really have a plan.

I suggested that he do the the following to build his plan.

  • List the category of companies that he should he be applying to:
    • Companies is his current industry – they would value his industry knowledge – this was a limited set of companies
    • Indian consulting companies – which would value his industry knowledge and his business analytics skillsets
    • IT services companies – they may value his skillset but not necessarily his industry knowledge as their clients were mostly outside of India
    • Companies focused on business analytics – this was his most recent experience and there were specialized companies
    • Start-ups – He wasn’t sure about this category considering the pay & the risks involved
  • Customize his resume for each category – emphasizing the aspects in his career which were relevant to that category
    • For example, he had worked on an important IT project in a business role and that was relevant to highlight to the IT services companies.
    • He had worked on a customer experience initiative and that was good to highlight to the Indian consulting company
  • Identify the companies in each category in the locations he wanted to be in
    • He was based in Bengaluru but was open to a few other cities
    • As we discussed, he realized that there were 10-20 companies in each category – the job universe had suddenly become quite large
  • Identify contacts that could refer him to those companies
    • His networking was quite restricted considering that he had worked in only 1 company
    • We however discussed and identified individuals apart from ex-colleagues – people from product and IT companies; thought leaders in his industry
    • His other networks – alumni networks, social networks
  • Reach out to the contacts and ask them to introduce
    • This is usually hard for many people – especially if you haven’t cultivated the networks over the years
  • Let people know that he was available to work as a free-lance consultant. The job search could take time and in the meantime he could take on short-term projects

I told him to create the plan and treat the job search like any other project. When faced with a major situation like a job loss, it is a natural tendency to lose control and get into a state of helplessness. I believe, that by developing a plan and executing on it every day, one could avoid that and can get positively energized – this would help in being more successful in the job search.